Deterministic networking techniques have been emerging in the industry in order to transmit data (e.g., packets, frames, etc.) across a computer network in order to reach a desired recipient at (or near) a specific time. Example environments that benefit from deterministic network (such as deterministic Ethernet) include industrial engineering or other networks requiring precision control timing (e.g., controlling actuators at a precise time). Data networks, on the other hand, have conventionally been less deterministic, generally not requiring precise delivery timing.
Certain communication protocols may benefit from being more deterministic. For example, audio-video bridging (AVB) is an example of a time-sensitive networking environment, where synchronization, low-latency, and reliability are paramount to an effective AVB system. For instance, AVB requirements include synchronizing multiple streams to ensure they can be rendered correctly in time (e.g., for lip syncing), where a worst case delay, including source and destination buffering, must be low and deterministic (e.g., 2 ms-50 ms).
Notably, traditional AVB techniques (e.g., IEEE 1722 at 802.1) leverage multicast addresses but only enable unicast traffic, the multicast addresses being effectively an artifact. Furthermore, AVB techniques currently do not avoid congestion loss, but instead only minimize congestion by using/establishing links with greater bandwidth availability (aka, “fatter pipes”). Though increasing the bandwidth within a network can be effective, it can be considered inefficient and inelegant, over-utilizing network resources and requiring burdensome configuration changes within the network.